Monday, October 20, 2008

I attended the District 33-34 Forum out at Southwest Middle School tonight. One of the questions brought to the candidates was the need for comprehensive sex education in the state. Amazingly, no candidate was willing to stand up and recommend abstinence-only education.

Wow. Talk about reality returning!

The warm fuzzy feeling I had that people were going to start talking sense immediately went cold when House Candidate (and Van Etten Protege) Phil Jensen asked out loud whether comprehensive sex education included "teaching of alternative lifestyles." I and several others in the audience were asking what he was talking about. He said he was talking about the "homosexual lifestyle choice." I said what can be wrong with it if you teach the "truth", at which point a fellow audience member turned to me derisively said: "go to San Francisco, if you want to see the truth!"

After the Forum, I got talking school funding with Jensen, who said that if Obama was elected, we'll all be taxed out of house and home. I told him that Obama's plan cuts taxes for just about everyone in South Dakota, his reply was that 40 percent of Americans don't pay taxes at all so Obama's plan will just be giving them welfare. Hm. When I got home I heard on the TV that he'd been listening to the lies on right wing media today.

This guy is like a walking, talking Rush Limbaugh/dittohead stereotype. I mean, it was all there: less government, Reagan quotes, lower taxes, more business, less regulation.

From my conversation and what I saw at the forum, it was clear that the guy is a walking right wing noise machine, who is very good at delivering prepared talking points (see the video, starting at 2:10) but let's say, lacks political depth.

What can I say, Phil Jensen in the State House would be bad for West River. He's like Van Etten, but without the expertise, experience and political ability. You should have seen Jensen's face when I told him that conservatives and progressives need to sit down together at the table to move South Dakota forward after the forum-- he looked like I was recommending liver and onions. And in the wake of the most damaging period of deregulation since the late 1920s, he's still singing the praises of the freeing the market, and thinks we pay way too much to educate children. (And he's married to a teacher, can you believe that!)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE support his opponents, Jeff Nelsen, Kim Henderson, and yes, even Republican Jacqueline Sly. This guy does not belong in the State House.

We've had enough of the Fox News Intellegentsia in Pierre--it's time for a reality-based legislature, one that honestly believes that government can be be done right.